A dumb people?

Local pundits find it incredible that Filipinos would support actors, singers, comedians, basketball players, TV hosts and similar personalities when they aspire to be mayors, governors, legislators or – expletives deleted! – no less than the nation’s president. Asphyxiated, blue in the face, with their sphincter control critically imperiled, those who presume to be this country’s political sophisticates ball their fists in anger and bang them on their tables or wring their hands in despair and curse the public for being uneducated, unpatriotic, opportunistic or simply dumb. Many vow to migrate if the current surveyed voting preferences carried over to the final COMELEC count in the elections of 2004.

A few – with perhaps the requisite amount of alcohol in their system – have promised to commit suicide if the popular will does not get to change drastically between now and just about a year from now. Between now and then, these sad souls who find solace in strong spirits probably would declare the specific modalities of their self-inflicted extinction.

But, really, why are Filipinos not intimidated by the idea that government would be run by those who have no proven capabilities except in the area of public entertainment and silver-screen illusions? Particularly in these trying times, why be supportive of wannabes who cannot tell the difference, economically speaking, between a recession and a depression or the gross national and gross domestic products, who are not conversant with indices of poverty, income distribution, unemployment and inflation and who are in the dark about the national budget, taxation, the public debt and other things that comprise public finance?

A riddle wrapped in a mystery within an enigma: how could so many Filipinos consider worthy of high public office those who have not read the Philippine Constitution at least once, whose knowledge of the law is fully encompassed by the idea that it is so much gobbledegook, who are unable to distinguish between a constitutional assembly and a constitutional convention in amending or changing the constitution, or the difference between a referendum and the process of recall? Separation of powers, checks and balances, separation of church and state, public accountability – all elementary issues that are explored in any introductory course in political science – how can Filipinos endorse for positions of governance those who patently have little understanding of these political fundamentals?

There are other equally agonizing questions that might be raised but they all focus on the same concern, why are people devoid of qualifications for public office doing so well in surveys of national voting preferences? And why have actual election counts attested to the popularity of actors, singers, comedians, basketball players, TV hosts and similar personalities when they aspire to be mayors, governors, legislators or – again expletives deleted! – to be no less than the nation’s president?!

There really are two broad answers to this painful question. One is that the public must be truly dumb and therefore incapable of patriotism and rational choice. The other answer is a bit more complex: the public is not dumb at all and so there must be a particularly revealing explanation for why most people find entertainers and media personalities suitable for high public office.

If most Filipinos are truly dumb, an intelligent, humane and patriotic Filipino will find it improper to feel superior or entertain some notion of either intellectual or moral ascendancy over them. Given Philippine historical conditions, such a person may even have a sense of horror, even deep remorse, that s/he might have abetted a situation that dumbed so many and condemned them to have so much of their natural endowments, their human potentials, aborted or bonsaied.

The official statistics of Philippine education monitor national budgetary allocations for education, popular access to different levels of education, the quality of mandatory educational programs, the levels of compensation for teachers who must implement these programs and other material items such as school buildings, classrooms, desks and textbooks. All statistical information on these critical concerns chart a long term trend that reads systemic deterioration, that points to a systematic mediocritization – a dumbing down – of the system and those who become an integral part it, regardless of their status as administrators, teachers or students. Over time, most Filipinos have suffered this unconscionable injury.

Poverty usually underpins any process that dumbs down a nation or any of its basic institutions like education. Beyond barring access to better quality education, the harsh conditions of life in this country also serve to brutalize the finer and truly more human sentiments that nature endows most people at birth. In this oligarchic and unchristian republic, compassion, sincerity, honesty and the preference for truth are all common casualties among the poor who are often forced to resort to an unnatural selfishness, deceit and prevarication simply to exist.

Among the intelligent and truly principled, no valid brief exists for castigating the very victims of a society’s systematic disabling processes. If most Filipinos now make poor choices in filling up elective positions because they are dumb, those who discern the cruel dynamics and the terrible reality of their choices will wisely refrain from sarcasm and rebukes. Instead, they will work to collectively expose and disestablish the system that dumbs the nation. They will help build a new order, one where people will not penalize candidates for being superbly entertaining but where those who do get elected are compelled by the public to have more substantial qualifications.

But what if one does not believe that Filipinos even now are dumb? That despite the handicaps of poor access to formal education and crushing poverty, Filipinos are really mostly smart? Why then do they consider candidates for public office the way they do? My next column looks into this paradox because I refuse to believe that our nation is mostly dumb. Our people must be sending us a message, one that we ignore only at our peril.